


Ascension

by plathitudes



Category: Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: All Hail the Queen, Gen, Irene is Fantastic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-21
Updated: 2012-11-21
Packaged: 2017-11-19 04:19:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/569016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plathitudes/pseuds/plathitudes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"First, you are a princess, a girl born unwanted and unnecessary.... Just a spare child, a meek daughter. You mean nothing."</p><p>An expansion on the story of how Irene came to power.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ascension

First, you are a princess, a girl born unwanted and unnecessary, silent-voiced and dark-eyed. You’re too big in your small-waisted dresses, too long and uncomfortable moving within your skin. Your brother is older, is handsome, is maybe not a very responsible prince and probably won’t be a good king, is adored despite it. Your father clasps his fingers, fat on his throne, smiles down benevolently at his proud son and dismisses you with vague smiles.

Just a spare child, a meek daughter. You mean nothing.

 

* * *

 

 

Your brother dies, kicked off the back of one of his fine horses. You sit in your room and cry softly, sewing in the dark with the needle stabbing into your fingers. Eventually you become absorbed in the stitching and forget to continue sobbing. Somewhere in the room lies the broken pieces of your amphora of perfume, painted prettily and sharp enough to break skin.

(You move to the heir’s chambers; later, to the queen’s. You avoid stepping into your old room; within it lies trapped the fading scent of the girl you were, the life you had. You need no reminders.)

 

* * *

 

Shadow princess, soon to be a shadow queen. Your fiance has large hands and beer in his breath like poison. He smirks at you and strokes your hair too hard, testing to see if you react. His friends are laughing, or perhaps they are his relatives; all the men here look the same. Too big, too overwhelming, too prone to smiling with their ceramic eyes. They talk about the fat king on his fat throne, taxing them to the bone and sucking out the marrow for good measure. Your fiance whirls you onto his lap and you perch there, leaning away from him, feeling your skin revolt at the touch of his sweat. You’re still holding your needlework. Your hands shake and you prick yourself more than once on accident, but your dress is dark enough to hide the drops of blood. You’ll help me with our game, won’t you, darling? he cooes, and laughs some more. Plain little shadow princess. Soon you’ll be a plain little queen.

 

* * *

 

 

You like the gardens at this new villa, at least. You walk there at dusk when the trees grow dark and the leaves turn cool and green. You tell your companions that coleus is your favorite plant, you helped plant a bush once with your brother, you like the smell of the leaves, the garden is beautiful, isn’t it?

Your attendants don’t even bother to smile at you anymore.

 

* * *

 

Your father dies, poisoned by a faceless assassin. You wonder if you had listened to the plot that ended his life being spun out amongst your fiance and his friends. You prick yourself as you had before, when your brother died, and yet no tears come. The skin of your fingers has grown tough. You put away your needle and thread, retrieve the gold jewelry your dead mother had left for you. It had been passed out amongst your father’s concubines until you had become the heir, when it had been restored. You finger it, polish the gold with the edge of your skirt.

You try to find a spark of emotion within you, something to prompt you to keep it. The last gift of a mother who died before you were even fully out of the womb.

At least your mother can be of some use, even beyond the grave.

The capital is unchanged. The people mourn their shining prince, their wealthy king, look beyond you to your fiance. They evaluate him. Not quite as dashing as they’d like. But shrewd, as the old king had been shrewd.

They approve. They smile, they applaud, they toast to his health in the wineshops, and you feel as though you are rehearsing the lines in a play that has yet to be properly performed. You wonder if history is repeating itself, if the lovely, bejeweled mother you have only known through paintings had once been a shadow princess as well.

Slowly, your store of jewelry dwindles. You crumble your gathered coleus leaves until they are nothing more than fine pale powder. You mix the powder in with the carmine to put on your lips. You had fabricated the tale of planting bushes with your brother for the benefit of the attendants, but you hope that some of his silver tongue, some of his good luck, is transferred onto your mouth as you swipe on the redness, ritualistic. Your mouth is a dark curve, under dark eyes and dark brows. You wear your drab dress and think that you would look much better in red.

 

* * *

 

Throughout the evening, your lips are never dry, and you never wet them except with a single sip of wine. When your husband chokes and dies next to you, the only thing you feel is your mouth burning with poison.

 

* * *

 

 

The serving-woman doesn’t bother to look at you as she strides through the halls. You follow, aware suddenly of the ease with which you move, the lack of the familiar clumsiness that has haunted your steps all your life. You wonder when the change occurred. Probably sometime when you were making the transition between shadow princess to shadow queen, you think wryly.

You sit on your throne. You feel the hardness of the seat beneath you, the hardness in the eyes of the men smiling at you, the hardness of the smirk of the baron who settles into the seat beside you. The king’s throne. Your father’s throne; the throne that would have been your brother’s. The throne that will never be yours.

You nod, and you know the captain of your guard has raised his crossbow, and you stare straight ahead. The baron’s blood splatters over the high, elaborate back of his high-elaborate chair, the velvet of which will have to be replaced.

You are Attolia, now. You have people to stand in the shadows for you. Your captain bows before you after all the barons have been shuffled out, bows lower than any of them had, and you feel approval spark deep inside you.

“My queen,” he says, eyes down.

You are.


End file.
